“BPA and BPS lurk in products all around us, notably in plastics, and research has shown that most people have trace amounts in their bodies. But that the millions of paper receipts consumers handle every day might be another—and significant—source of exposure is not well known.” This is one of the reasons California may get behind legislation to ban large retailers and banks from offering paper receipts by 2022.

“Thank heavens for Berkeley.” The liberal enclave “was an early adopter of curbside recycling and banned polystyrene…30 years ago, way before it was hip to do so.” And now Berkeley is becoming “the first California city to take on the challenge of crafting a truly comprehensive plan to reduce single-use plastic trash.” The waste-reduction initiative Berkeley is enacting “could serve as the test case for other cities and states.” The liberal bastion has “answered the call to think beyond bags and straws.”

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to weed out black money through a ban on high-value currency notes haven’t yielded the desired results.” The Government estimated approximately one-third of the 15.4 trillion rupees in circulation on Nov. 8, 2016 “wouldn’t be returned to banks because it was stashed illegally to avoid tax.” In reality, 99.3% of the invalidated banknotes were returned. Only “107 billion rupees hasn’t yet been received by the Reserve Bank of India after the cash ban.”

Women currently “account for 22% of the Saudi workforce, according to government statistics. Bin Salman’s goal is to get that figure up to 30% by 2030. Not only will having women behind the wheel improve participation in the workforce, it will help the economy. According to Bloomberg, the lifting of the ban could add as much as $90 billion to economic output by 2030.”

“As the problem of plastic waste around the world has gotten worse, many countries and companies have begun to ban single-use plastic items.” Ikea has added momentum to this movement. Ikea announced “it will stop selling single-use plastic products in its stores and remove them from its restaurants by 2020.” This ties into the retailer’s larger sustainability vision. Ikea seeks “to become ‘planet positive’ by 2030, and aims to purchase 100% renewable energy by 2020, achieve zero emissions on deliveries by 2025 and start using only renewable and recycled materials in its products.”

“America’s top business executives may have bristled over President Trump’s ban on refugees, his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and his decision to bar transgender Americans from the military.” Still, “it wasn’t until the embattled president all but defended white supremacists in the aftermath of the deadly clashes over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., that the country’s corporate elite decided they had had enough.”And, “by Wednesday, so many executives had resigned from Trump’s economic advisory and manufacturing councils, including the heads of General Electric Co., Intel Corp. and Campbell Soup Co., that the president announced on Twitter that he was disbanding the panels.”

“More than 420,000 auto jobs in Germany could be imperilled by a 2030 ban on combustion engine cars” that’s currently under debate. “The beguilingly deceptive electric car… might look like any other car from the outside but inside, it is more like a computer on wheels.” For example, UBS analysts discovered a Chevy Bolt “had just 24 moving parts compared with 149 in a VW Golf, mainly because electric motors are so much simpler than combustion engines.” Moreover, it was much cheaper to produce than expected, leading to their conclusion that “with further cost falls likely, electric cars would probably disrupt the industry faster than widely understood.

“The abundance of assault weapons, and the ease with which they can be purchased in the USA, is a gap that gives mass shooters an edge.” No ban will be perfect, but banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines would “save lives and make it harder to carry out mass murder.” This is reason enough to make a ban worthwhile.

“Support for making marijuana legal is increasing around the world, and that is a good thing…. Laws banning the growing, distribution and possession of marijuana have caused tremendous damage to society, with billions spent on imprisoning people for violating pointlessly harsh laws.” Moreover, “marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol and tobacco, and can be used to treat medical conditions like chronic pain.”

“Given the rapid changes in that region, the fishing ban hasn’t come too soon.” With the Arctic melt proceeding faster than many imagined, the U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark have proactively “put a ‘No Fishing’ sign on the high seas portion of the central Arctic until full scientific studies have been conducted.”